The Green Party of Texas held its first Candidate Development Workshop of the 2017-18 electoral cycle this past weekend at the downtown Dallas Public Library. I extend megakudos to those who coordinated the event, especially state co-chair Laura Palmer, longtime avatar of Texas Greenery katija assana gruene, and the Dallas County Greens' secretary Joy Vidheecharoen. Among other contributions, Joy provided tasty vegan vittles.

In several ways, the workshop went remarkably well, and it will likely serve as a template for workshops in other parts of Texas. Several individuals, whether they had run for office previously or not, got some great information about the big picture and finer points of the process.

For me, the gathering was a refreshing antidote to the bitter taste left by June's GPTX state meeting. I emerged feeling better about calling myself a Green, proudly talking in we terms about the future of the Party.

Sadly, the good vibes I brought home from Dallas were blown away by the news from Las Vegas, after first being buffeted by the shock of the Spanish government's violent crackdown on Catalan demonstrators. As heavy as my heart is this morning, however, I feel obliged to post my impressions from the weekend as I said I would.

It's been a Texas-size weekend for the Stein/Baraka campaign. Dr. Jill Stein and her mini-entourage appeared in El Paso Friday for a crowd of about 300, nearly as many in Houston Saturday, moved on to San Antonio yesterday, and will scoot up I-35 into Austin today. (I extend my sympathies to my comrades in Greater Dallas–Fort Worth, who will not get a visit from Jill this time around. Laredo and the Valley got to see her last year.)

In addition, Sunday night, John Oliver actually deigned not only to mention Jill Stein and the Greens, but to take Stein's candidacy seriously—as seriously as a comedy news analysis program should, anyway. He also took Gary Johnson's Libertarian candidacy seriously for a few seconds...and then totally didn't.

The crowd at Last Concert Café Saturday (pictures here and here and on Brains & Eggs) was large and enthusiastic. However, not everyone in attendance came in as Stein supporters, and not everyone left as Stein supporters. Some came just out of curiosity, to find out whether Jill would be a better choice than the abhorrent major-party nominees.

A couple of friends, progressive but not hardcore Greens like me, accepted my invitation to the campaign event at LCC. They reported afterward on Facebook that the event gave them a bitter taste, partly from what Jill or the other speakers said from the stage, but more due to what they heard from the crowd. Somebody busted out with a cry to put Hillary Clinton in prison, a line more befitting a Trump rally, and another referred to Secretary Clinton as "Shitlary."

I had to assure my friends that longtime Greens try to eschew that kind of talk, especially in public, not that we're always successful in that effort. Trash talk of that sort comes mostly, though not exclusively, from people who are new to the movement and don't understand the importance we place on civil discourse. Another friend commented that you see and hear a lot worse at rallies for major-party candidates.

September 22: Harris County Green Party candidates' forum, 7 pm
Trinity Episcopal Church Fellowship Hall, 1015 Holman Street, near Ensemble/HCC MetroRail stop. If you want to know what the Greens really stand for, please join us, and invite lots of friends.

Invite your friends who are inclined to vote Green, perhaps as a protest vote, perhaps because they are true embodiments of the Green Vision.

Invite your friends who are considering not voting at all because "both major parties suck," but who don't know about the Greens beyond the occasional joke on late-night TV.

Invite your friends who will likely vote for Democrats, but maybe don't know that I am the only alternative to Ed Emmett on this year's ballot.

In a press release, Blogmeister Perry Dorrell of Brains & Eggs has actually referred to the Harris County Judge election as the most significant for Greens in this area, owing to the lack of a Democratic candidate in the race. I take that as a profound compliment on my long-considered decision to put my name in for the position.

The County Judge gig was not my first choice, I will admit with all due frankness. I am much more the legislator type than the executive type. At the 2012 Green Party of Texas convention, in my nomination speech I told those assembled that I would be willing to run again in 2014. However, when Emily Sánchez indicated that she wanted to run for the US Senate seat currently housing the tush of John Cornyn, I yielded to her because I relished the thought of our running a smart Latina for such an exalted position.

My next thought was to run for Sheila Jackson-Lee's Congressional seat in District 18, where I have lived for nearly three years. Last fall, however, Remington Alessi and I worked it out where he would run against Sheila. He's really the better choice for that, because it takes someone with Remington's raw irreverence to challenge SJ-L: She occupies one of the safest seats in the nation.

I told Remington the story of my traveling to Palm Center for the only Sunday of early voting in the 2012 General Election, when the women who came out to represent SJ-L were telling voters to vote a straight Democratic ticket. That made him even more eager to run in District 18.

I don't pin the blame for the Palm Center episode on SJ-L herself. There were not many cameras on the scene, so she did not appear. Let the Democratic Party Culture of Inevitability wear the blame.

There's this tragic notion in low-income and African-American neighborhoods that the Democratic Party and its candidates are actually working for them; that there are only two political parties, and no matter how unresponsive and ineffective the D's are, the R's are openly hostile and therefore worse. Anything or anyone challenging the Democrats is a mere annoyance to be ignored or swatted away. Democrats keep getting elected, but even though many of those elected are black or brown, racism and de facto segregation don't go away. Good jobs don't come running to the neighborhoods. We still get government of, by, and for the corporations.

If Sheila is guilty, it's guilt by association with a party that continues to run interference for corporate titans, to support the US "all I got is a hammer" foreign policy, to talk about the changing climate but (to paraphrase Mark Twain) not do anything about it. Whatever the Green Party is, it's not that.

See you at Trinity Episcopal on the 22nd.

Here's the thing: While I am the Green Party's 2014 candidate for Harris County Judge, I don't have time or money to campaign seriously. The Democratic candidate has withdrawn from the race. Even so, I have precious little chance of defeating the incumbent. It will interesting to see how many people will vote for me this November just because I'm not Republican Ed Emmett—and how many won't bother to choose between us.

This month I will make a few educational appearances, and I'll show up at a multi-candidate fundraiser, but that's because I've been invited. I am not actively pursuing appearances.

The focus of my "campaign" is to inform people of the Green Movement and its principles, not necessarily to win. Yes, Green Party candidates do win elections in this country, especially at the local level. We are a viable political force, to the extent that we frighten the Democrats and make them try (and fail miserably) to "out-Progressive" us.

No time because I work for a living and for my housing co-op. No money because I'm still catching up on bills after a period of unemployment and a recent accident.

What I do have is friends. I wouldn't normally ask my friends to put in any more effort than I can (hey, that blog takes WORK!), but I will ask this:

1. Give my website a look: www.dbcgreentx.net. Yeah, I know what iCarly said: "dot-net is for losers."
2. If you like what you read there, pass the information on to friends and relatives of yours in Harris County.

There are more than 2 million registered voters in Harris County. About a third of them will vote in the general election on 4 November—say 700,000. It seems like I'm thinking small, but in light of everything stated above, can this campaign pull 10% of that? Let's do what we can to make it happen, shall we?

(NOTE: I composed this entry some time in June, before I was able to put this website together. I never finished it, but it's long enough as it is, don't you think?--dbc)

I'll be quite candid with you, Dear Reader. I didn't especially want to run for Harris County Judge. Much of county government in Texas revolves around tax policy, and my understanding of tax policy is best described as "intuitive." County taxation and expenditure is as nuts & bolts as it gets.

When I ran for the open US Senate seat in 2012, the office of Senator fit my big-picture orientation on the world; I have a much deeper understanding of and appreciation for the philosophical questions that guide the deliberative house of Congress. I made several trips to various spots in Texas, some of which I had visited previously, some not. It was easy to connect with voters in Austin, San Antonio, Dallas-Fort Worth, Laredo, Midland-Odessa, Lufkin-Nacogdoches, and West, as well as Houston; most of the voters knew a thing or two about he US Senate.

I saw myself running for Senate again in 2014, this time against the incumbent John Cornyn. However, I made my move a little too late, and Emily "SpicyBrown" Sánchez of Del Rio filed for that position first. I could have run against her—sometimes we do have contested nominations in the Green Party of Texas—but I saw that my schedule in my new job would be less flexible about traveling during the work week and thus demurred.

My next choice would have been to run for US House District 18, occupied since 1995 by Sheila Jackson Lee. Yes, as much as I have touted Rep. Jackson Lee as a Progressive ally, it was time to give her some competition. However, Remington Alessi proved himself much more enthusiastic about taking on this challenge. Whereas I have trepidations about alienating potential allies in the Democratic Party (going back to 2000), Remington has none.

OK then, how about County Judge? I have lived in Houston itself, as well as in the unincorporated wilds of Cy-Fair and Clear Lake. My total time living in Harris County adds up to more than 40 years. I wasn't born here, but destiny brought me here at age 3. My first home here was in Bunker Hill Village, where my grandparents had bought a house during the great oil & gas migrations of the 1960s and '70s. As much as I love Houston itself, I love this sprawling county that is larger than Rhode Island and four times as populous. I have seen examples of good and bad county government: I lived in Precinct 3 when Bob Eckels had his legal difficulties. I have seen 40 years of unguided growth, flood maps redrawn in secret, real estate developers getting too wealthy and powerful, people and small businesses getting the shaft.

It's well past time to bring smart, sensible growth to Harris County.

Side note: Why run against Sheila? For one thing, she's not as Progressive as she would like her constituents to believe. It's hard to be consistently Progressive in the House of Representatives, so I completely understand that: Sometimes you have to engage in horse-trading, and sometimes you have to follow the path that will best serve your district regardless of your ideology. What galls me even more, though, was an incident having to do with Sheila's campaign troops in 2012.

I went to Palm Center on the Sunday of early voting in October 2012. Palm Center, at the corner of Griggs Road and Martin Luther King Boulevard, combines commercial and community facilities between the Third Ward and Sunnyside districts of southeast Houston. It's a great place for early voting, and on that one Sunday locals turn out after church, dressed in their finery, and they socialize before and after they vote. I was encouraging voters to vote for Green candidates in races where the Democrats had no nominees, and to look farther down the ballot for the bond issues (such as $2 billion for fixing HISD school buildings). A few of Sheila's crew showed up and started encouraging voters to vote straight-ticket Democrat, which would have deprived them of voting in two statewide races and on the bonds.

If it were just me, the middle-aged white dude, affected by this, it would have been bad enough, as they made me feel like an outsider bringing in complex foreign ideas like multi-party democracy. But it wasn't just me: Dozens of high schoolers were already there as well, trying to convince voters to approve the HISD bonds, which they couldn't do if they just voted Straight D and walked out. I truly believe that Sheila's campaigners did the people of the MLK Corridor a grave disservice by telling them that voting anything other than Straight D was too complicated for them.